How to Find the AI Companies Big Tech May Buy Next
Apple paid nearly $2 billion for a startup with no public product. Here’s what its earliest investors saw first.
Listen to the audio version of this article (generated by AI).
Editor’s Note: My colleague Luke Lango studies where the AI boom is going next – and which young companies are building technologies the Big Tech giants may eventually decide they need.
Today, he’s looking at one of Apple’s largest recent acquisitions: Q.ai, an obscure AI startup reportedly purchased for nearly $2 billion despite having no sales or publicly available product. Luke believes the deal offers investors an important lesson about how enormous gains can be created before a company ever reaches the stock market.
He’ll also explain the “PPT” framework he uses to evaluate these unusual opportunities. And in his free 2026 AI Megadeal Event, he applies that process to one private AI company you can examine today. You can watch the replay here.
But first, Luke is going to take us back to 2009, when an Israeli venture capitalist watched a technology demonstration so convincing that his first reaction was… well, I don’t want to spoil it.
Take it away, Luke.
“No f—ing way.”
That’s what Israeli venture capitalist Eden Shochat reportedly said after watching a YouTube video in 2009.
On-screen, a man moved in front of a camera while a digital skeleton mirrored every step and gesture in real time. Today, that might not sound remarkable – but in 2009, it looked like science fiction..
Source: YouTube
The company behind it was PrimeSense, an Israeli startup whose motion-sensing technology was later licensed for Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) Kinect gaming system. In 2013, Apple Inc. (AAPL) acquired PrimeSense for a reported $350 million and eventually used its depth-sensing expertise to support technologies such as Face ID.
Among PrimeSense’s founders was a young entrepreneur named Aviad Maizels.
After the acquisition, Maizels spent several years at Apple. Then he left and started another company.
This one was called Q.ai.
Founded in 2022 by Maizels, Yonatan Wexler, and Avi Barliya, Q.ai developed machine-learning systems designed to improve audio in difficult environments, understand whispered speech, and interpret subtle facial movements.
When Shochat’s team learned that Maizels was building something new, they asked to see it. They had been impressed by what he’d accomplished at PrimeSense and didn’t want to miss his next act.
Once again, the technology seemed almost too ambitious. This time, instead of watching from the sidelines, Shochat invested.
And in January 2026, Apple bought Q.ai for a reported $1.6 billion to nearly $2 billion. At the higher reported price, PitchBook estimates that the deal may have returned more than 30 times the original investment for some of Q.ai’s earliest backers — in roughly three years.
Q.ai reportedly had no sales and no publicly available product when Apple bought it. So it’s fair to ask: Why would one of the world’s largest companies pay nearly $2 billion for it?
And more importantly for us as investors: What did Q.ai’s early backers recognize before Apple came calling?
That’s what I want to show you today.
The answer reveals a different way to profit from the AI boom, one that doesn’t start by buying shares of Apple, Nvidia Corp. (NVDA), or another tech giant after the headlines hit. It starts much earlier.
And along the way, I’ll show you the three questions I use to evaluate every private AI company before I ever recommend it.
The Three Things Apple Was Really Buying
Apple hasn’t explained exactly how it plans to use Q.ai’s technology, but the broad appeal is easy to understand.
Computers have become extraordinarily powerful, yet communicating with them can still feel clumsy. Voice assistants mishear us. Background noise interferes. Devices struggle to understand whispers, facial movements, and other subtle signals people use naturally.
Q.ai is attempting to close that gap.
Its technology could become especially valuable as computing moves beyond keyboards and screens and deeper into AirPods, watches, glasses, phones, and other devices that remain close to us throughout the day.
But Apple wasn’t buying only a promising product.
It was buying three things:
The right people. A potentially valuable technology. And years of development time it could not afford to lose.
Those are the same three things I examine before considering an investment in any young private company. I call the framework PPT: People, Product, and Timing.
Let’s use that framework on Q.ai…
People: Start with Maizels. He had already built one technically ambitious company and sold it to Apple.
PrimeSense took technology that looked like science fiction and made it work in commercial products. Apple had employed Maizels, worked with his team, and incorporated the company’s expertise into its own devices.
Past success never guarantees another win, but Maizels had already shown that he could build advanced technology, turn it into something useful, and attract one of the most sophisticated buyers in the world.
That gave Q.ai’s early investors something more valuable than a polished pitch. It gave them evidence.
Product: Q.ai was working at the intersection of audio, imaging, and machine learning to help devices understand people more naturally. That matters because the next generation of computing may depend less on tapping screens and more on speaking, listening, watching, and interpreting context.
Q.ai is attempting to solve a problem that several of the world’s largest technology companies urgently want solved.
Timing: Apple is pushing AI across everything it produces. At the same time, it is competing with Meta Platforms Inc. (META), Alphabet Inc. (GOOG), OpenAI, and other device makers to shape the next major computing interface.
Apple could have spent years trying to reproduce Q.ai’s work internally. Instead, it bought the company that had already assembled the team and developed the technology. That is what favorable timing can do.
In other words, Apple was buying Q.ai’s people, its product, and the time those assets could save.
For Q.ai’s earliest investors, recognizing those three things before Apple did may have produced an extraordinary payday.
A Different Way to Invest in the AI Boom
Most investors participate in a buyout like this by owning the buyer.
They see Apple announce an acquisition and ask whether it will help Apple sell more iPhones, improve Siri, or compete more effectively in AI.
That can still be a profitable way to invest.
But Q.ai’s early investors occupied a very different position. They owned part of the company Apple wanted to buy.
They were already there when the acquisition was announced, when Q.ai was still an obscure young company attempting something difficult. By then, the opportunity was over.
That is the private-investing opportunity in plain English: Find valuable young companies before the tech giants decide they need them.
Big Tech has enormous amounts of money, but it does not have unlimited time. Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), Anthropic, and OpenAI cannot invent every important AI capability internally.
When a smaller company develops technology that could save them years of work, buying that company may be faster and cheaper than starting from scratch.
That does not mean every promising AI startup becomes a multibillion-dollar acquisition. Some will run out of money. Others will build impressive technology but fail to turn it into a viable business.
That is why simply gaining access to these opportunities is not enough. You still need a disciplined way to decide which ones deserve your attention.
That’s what I designed PPT to provide. It helps me ask three practical questions:
- Have these People shown that they can execute?
- Does the Product solve a problem important customers urgently need solved?
- Is the Timing right? Is the market ready to reward the company now?
Q.ai appears to have answered yes to all three.
That is the work I recently took to Silicon Valley. I wanted to examine one specific private AI company from the inside. I wanted to study its founders, understand what its technology actually does, and determine why the timing could make it unusually valuable today.
I shared what I found during The 2026 AI Megadeal Event.
In that free presentation, I walk through the company using the same PPT framework we just applied to Q.ai. I explain who is building it, what problem its technology solves, why the opportunity exists now, and how individual investors can review the deal for themselves.
I cannot promise Apple or any other tech giant will buy this company. But I can show you why its People earned my attention, why its Product could matter, and why I believe the Timing makes it worth examining now.
Aviad Maizels built two companies that Apple ultimately wanted. Neither needed an IPO to generate a major payday for its earliest owners.
While plenty of the biggest winners in the next phase of AI will trade on the stock market, others will never reach that stage. They’ll be bought before Wall Street ever gets the chance to assign them a ticker.
The opportunity is to find them before a tech giant does.
Watch the replay of The 2026 AI Megadeal Event here.
Sincerely,
Luke Lango
Senior Investment Analyst, InvestorPlace
P.S. Luke has spent years studying the technologies that could define the next phase of the AI boom. What I like about his approach is that he digs into the founders, the product, and why the opportunity exists now. In The 2026 AI Megadeal Event, you can watch him apply that process to one private AI company he believes deserves attention today. I encourage you to check out the replay.